Love.
It's so beautiful, the way it can wrap around you like the petals of the sweetest flower and keep you warm on the coldest nights. To me, there couldn't possibly be anything better than love in this world, and I never wanted to lose his. Hail's.
I met Hail when I was younger, four seasons old, I suppose I would have been. I was tangled up in a patch of thistles, my fur torn out and in clumps around the bushes. I had finally given up and was just laying there, thorns digging into my sides. Then he came clomping through the forest and scattering leaves all over the place. Every single piece of prey must have been long gone by the time he got there. His deep amber eyes swept over me, glittering in amusement, before he helped me out with gentle tugs and soft words.
After that, he tried to go find something for me to eat while I recovered, but he was a terrible hunter, and I spent the next moon teaching him how to hunt correctly. He still wasn't a wonderful hunter, but at least he could catch something to eat every now and then.
I don't quite know when I fell in love with him, or when he fell in love with me, but we were in love now, and that was all that mattered at this point. I didn't think I would have made it the rest of my life if he hadn't showed up. I'm not exactly sure how I made up to that fifth season without him.
"It's beautiful, isn't it?" His nose was pointed to the sky, the light of the moon turning his eyes silver.
"What?" I was laying beside him, my fur brushing his and my head on his shoulder.
He looked over at me. As the moonlight vanished from his eyes, the silver melted into the deepest amber, gold ringing his pupil and ribbons of yellow twirling around the irises. "The moon, of course."
It was beautiful. We'd spent many a day staring up at the glowing white orb, wishing we could reach up and grasp it with our paws, hang it on the roof of the cave and sleep with the cool, gentle embrace of the light. Some days I truly yearned for the luminous sphere to be my own, but it was impossible. "Yes," I breathed to Hail, burying my nose in his fluffy gray fur.
He cocked his head at the sky. "I can smell snow," he whispered. "It'll probably snow tomorrow."
"Do you think?" I never liked snow. Cold and always sticking between my toes like frozen leeches, sucking the warmth from my paws. Sure, it was pretty and sparkly on the way down, but that never made up for the emptiness it made me feel, as if my world had suddenly been deprived of color. How upsetting that would be.
Hail knew I didn't like snow. "Most likely." Actually, I disliked winter as a whole. It was a dreary season. Little food, always and empty pit in the stomach, no color, no warmth. I was always elated when the first warm fingers of spring caressed my fur.
"Ah well." What could I do about it anyway? Besides, winter was to be the least of my worries.
I would have other concerns to bother with.